PHILADELPHIA — The game had been finished for 40 minutes, but Rob Thomson still wore his dugout bomber jacket when he stepped into the Phillies clubhouse Monday night. He wanted to shake Seranthony Domínguez’s hand. Domínguez, the winning pitcher, thanked his manager.
Thomson did not have to use Domínguez in the 10th inning of a tie game — one day after Domínguez surrendered yet another home run to raise his ERA to 7.50. He could have moved Domínguez down the bullpen pecking order. Everyone would have understood.
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“No,” Thomson said Monday afternoon before a 2-1 Phillies win over the Colorado Rockies. “No, I’m right there with him. He’s back. I mean, I really have a lot of confidence in him.”
Thomson stuck with his righty reliever. Domínguez prevented the automatic runner at second base from scoring. The Phillies won it in the bottom of the 10th on a walk-off single by a little-used outfielder who had six at-bats before Monday and entered only as a pinch runner.
PACHE PULLS THRUUUUUUU pic.twitter.com/1P3T8ilVOG
— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) April 16, 2024
Everyone will remember the first three weeks of this Phillies season for how a high-priced lineup has failed to resemble anything close to a competent offense. But the dead-ball Phillies are 9-8 — their best 17-game start in five years — because they have won in the dumbest possible ways. It is often difficult to watch. A bad offense sucks the energy out of the ballpark. People were doing the wave — the wave — in the eighth inning of a tie game at Citizens Bank Park. Anything to distract them from the Phillies hitting.
But the Phillies are learning how to win ugly. Every nine-inning sample provides evidence that, while frustrating in their current state, there are reasons to believe this could work well. Domínguez rewarded his manager’s trust. Aaron Nola looked like Aaron Nola again. Trea Turner smacked another double. A few Phillies even hit baseballs to the warning track.
“We’re finding ways to win,” Thomson said.
When the short-handed Rockies used a starting pitcher to pinch run in the ninth inning, he tried to score on a wild pitch. Kyle Freeland did not slide with grace into home plate. Jeff Hoffman, another pitcher, attacked Freeland like a linebacker. He was out. It was absurd.
“I wish,” Hoffman said, “baseball was more of a contact sport.”
"I wish baseball was more of a contact sport!"
Jeff Hoffman discusses the wild play at the plate in the 9th. pic.twitter.com/jhN3YuZbTS
— NBC Sports Philadelphia (@NBCSPhilly) April 16, 2024
It was the best contact the Phillies made all night. Yeah, they laughed about it. The hitters are working. They are probably trying too hard. They have scored 60 runs in 17 games and they know it’s not good enough.
Consider it a mulligan.
“Over the course of the season there’s going to be a lot of guys picking each other up,” Hoffman said. “Right now, you could say that the pitchers are doing that for the offense. We can look up a month from now and the hitters can be carrying the pitchers. So, it’s a marathon season. We just kind of roll with the waves. At the end of the day, hopefully, we take care of each other well enough to really win a bunch of ballgames.”
Only the Kansas City Royals have had more starts of six-plus innings with one earned run allowed than the Phillies. The Phillies, of course, are only 3-3 in those games. They won Monday when scoring three or fewer runs for the first time this season.
“Grinding,” Nola said. “We’re competing, for sure. We haven’t scored many runs. That’s going to come, for sure. Our team’s too good. We’ve seen what our lineup can do.”
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Consider the opposite scenario: If the Phillies had crushed the ball in the first 17 games but not pitched well, the level of concern might be higher. Pitching is tenuous across the sport right now. It’s possible to win without slugging the ball, but it’s borderline impossible without quality pitching. The Phillies can expect some regression from the pitchers. But their current performance — a 3.74 ERA with a middle-of-the-pack batting average on balls in play and home run rate — is not unsustainable. In essence, the Phillies can expect more positive regression from their hitters than negative regression from the pitchers.
It’s why no one has expressed outward concern inside the clubhouse. There is real frustration; Bryce Harper slamming his bat in the eighth inning is confirmation. Nick Castellanos still does not have an extra-base hit. Bryson Stott keeps hitting the ball hard for outs and dribbling ones up the third base line for singles. Kyle Schwarber, for some bizarre reason, has not hit righties.
Some of it seems fixable. This should be a get-right week for the Phillies, facing two lesser opponents in the Rockies and Chicago White Sox. It didn’t feel that way for 10 innings Monday night, but it still ended with the dugout rushing toward Cristian Pache to celebrate his game-winning hit.
“We’re getting great pitching here,” Thomson said. “Hopefully that keeps going. And then, once our offense gets going, we’re going to be just fine. But right now we’re grinding and we’re finding ways to win. So that’s a good sign.”
The Phillies had one 17-game stretch last season in which they scored fewer than 60 runs. They went 5-12 while scoring 57 runs from May 14 to June 1.
“Keep taking those good at-bats and balls are going to fall,” Stott said. “As long as you’re having good at-bats, there’s always a chance for a 15-run game. We just haven’t gotten there yet. Obviously, there’s some at-bats that — I’ve taken some personally, I think everyone’s kind of taken some that you know that’s not them. And you want to get back to what you do and how you do it.”
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So, they’re lucky. The pressure would be mounting if the pitchers hadn’t saved the hitters in the first 17 games. Maybe, like Hoffman said, it’ll be the reverse in May. Or, maybe, the Phillies will discover how to hit and pitch at the same time.
That might look formidable.
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(Top photo of Cristian Pache: Bill Streicher / USA Today)
